Very sad news in the publishing world this week. Samhain announced after ten years of publishing some of the best titles out there, they would be shutting down. It’s not going to be a quick process. They will continue to release the books that have been finalized for release and will not be pulling their.titles from shelves that have already been released. However, they are not taking any new works, and will be returning rights to all authors who have not had their projects finalized for release.
You can read their letter to the public here, it outlines their strategy to gracefully exit the publishing realm and explains why their end has come.
Personally, this news not only saddens me, but frightens me. Samhain has been the carrot that I’ve been chasing. I’ve mentioned this before, I’ve turned my novella Hidden Heart into a full length novel, and have been working to polish it up so that I could give traditional publishing a chance. I wanted to get in with Samhain, it was my first choice house to publish with. When I went to double check their submission guidelines the other day, I was met with a notice that they weren’t taking any more unsolicited manuscripts. Well crap! But I figured no big deal, I’ll find another way of getting under thier noses, but now that hope is all gone.
If a publisher that produces good work such as Samhain can’t sustain profit or growth, I worry if writing will ever be my main career. It’s the thing I’m most passionate about, the task that gets me out of bed at 5 am every morning so I can get 1,000 to 1,500 words written before I head off to the day job. For that reason I won’t be giving up, and I’m sure everyone that is directly affected by this closure will not be giving up either.
I wish every one of them the best of luck in landing somewhere else safely and quickly. Definitely not a happy day in the publishing world.